Curriculum

At Cardinal Newman we strive to provide a Creative Curriculum that is broad and balanced reflecting the learning styles and needs of the individual pupils within a Catholic environment based upon the Gospel Values.

A Creative Curriculum enables a proportion of the curriculum to be taught through carefully planned and well-structured themes or units of work, in which subjects are linked and contribute to the development of key ideas and skills.

This enables children to:

Question and challenge: asking questions such as “why does it happen this way?” “what if we tried it that way?”, responding to tasks or problems in an unusual way, showing independent thinking.

Make connections and see relationships: using analogies, making unusual connections, applying knowledge and experience in a new context.

Envisage what might be: seeing new possibilities, looking at things in different ways, asking “what if?” or “what else?”

We encourage all children to be Active learners. This means developing ways for all children to engage in the curriculum and take responsibility for shaping their own approach to learning whether it is a focussed task or a research piece. The children ask and answer questions, discover rules, share viewpoints and collaborate with others.

At Cardinal Newman the Curriculum includes all National Curriculum subjects as well as many planned enrichment opportunities. The children are fortunate in having the chance to participate in a wide variety of themed days in school particularly linked to the History topics studied.

The children take part in a number of day visits related to various topics covered throughout the school. In Year 4 and 6 there is also the opportunity to take part in residential visits to Hooke Court and France respectively.

There is the opportunity for children to experience over 20 different extra-curricular clubs that are offered throughout the course of their time at Cardinal Newman.

The stimulating range of subjects and topics covered makes a good contribution to pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. There is also a wide range of additional activities for pupils at the end of the school day. (OFSTED 2012)